What We Do
We offer experiential learning events informed by systems psychodynamics to explore leadership, power, authority, embodiment and difference.
ICI partners with grassroots community development and social justice practitioners, and academics to critically reflect on best practices for embodied learning.
Here, ICI founder Barbara Williams explains our purpose and methods
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The Principles behind our work:
Commitment to work towards social justice through equitable access to resources.
This includes considering working digitally, timezones, flexible cost, meeting relational responsibilities, prioritizing anti-racism, anti-misogyny, anti-ableism, and accessibility.
Commitment to exploring the complexity of difference with curiosity.
This includes how judgements and identifications are both illuminating and limiting, but tend not to be challenged beyond a point. This requires engaging in difficult conversations that require thoughtful navigation around questions of harm in the process of learning and its real-world applications.
Commitment to accountability.
Being responsible and accountable to ourselves and the group, and to recognize the land we are on.
Commitment to exploring collective unconscious processes in groups.
This includes exploring their unconscious processes, anxieties and defenses with the support of a consultant who provides containment, focuses on the task and fosters curiosity about language, bodies and what is explored and ignored.
Commitment to embodiment as a source of knowledge.
This includes knowledge about our experience, and the importance of recognizing human needs for rest, nourishment and relatedness.
Commitment to shared leadership.
This is sought through role clarity, benefitting from others’ expertise and developing leadership.
Commitment to working with judgement.
This includes taking up the work of articulating oppressive dynamics without punishing remarks that foster silence and exclusion.
Our Approach
Insight for Community Impact’s work is grounded in:
Systems psychodynamics (SPD)
Tavistock group relations methodology
Embodiment practices
Exploring the complexity and nuance of identifications
Social justice aspirations
Systems psychodynamic theory helps us think about how unconscious processes shape our efforts to learn. Specifically, we are interested in learning about “Difference’ in ways which do not repeat violent ‘othering’ and include the body and its rich data, thought embodiment and movement work.
We make use of the Tavistock group relations approach which has provided a powerful container for enhancing self-other knowledge through the task of exploring what is going on within a group in the “here and now”. The familiar practices of a leader-led group are removed so that individuals can explore the unconscious thoughts and feelings that arise in the group.
Group members and consultants have an opportunity to explore their relationship to authority and to how individuals might authorize themselves to take up leadership through different roles. Members also learn about how groups unconsciously replay anxieties by avoiding tasks, scapegoating individuals, and inhibiting creative thinking.
ICI’s group relations approach extends this exploration through shared leadership, embodiment practices and a recognition of the political realities which shape our experience.
Embodiment
We develop awareness of our (group) unconscious processes through:
The individual experience and focus on body sensings - learning to ‘read’ one’s own physical and psychical body - what the body ‘tells’ me about my experiences and my interconnectedness to the natural world.
What is ‘read’ by others about my bodily ‘communication’ - what you/I might or might not be aware of or dispute that my body positioning/movements suggests to others.
How ‘individual grounding activities’ (albeit done in a group) - that we would initiate - help us get in touch with our own body-language/knowledge
How ‘group activities’ activate the ‘collective body-knowledge of the group physically and unconsciously (some are representations of knowledge or explorations of difference and require verbal language, some are fun/silent/body-language only).
Exploring Difference, Identity and Identifications
Identity claims and identifications carry belonging; they reflect ways of being and life experiences, and are often evoked in political struggle.
Identity claims and identifications carry belonging; reflect ways of being and life experiences, and are often evoked in political struggle. Identifications — or identificatory practices — provide a way of naming oneself in relation to others and of pointing to misalignments, misrecognitions, misunderstandings, and ‘conflicts of difference.’ Identity-based analysis helps us see how systems of power affect people differently — revealing felt- patterns of privilege or exclusion that would otherwise remain unspoken and invisible.
ICI believes that exploring difference recognizes that speaking positions within any identity category are not all the same but contain within them complex differences and emotional ties that can be explored to build a shared terrain.
By reflecting on the desires and defenses embedded in moments when identifications are evoked, groups can build a deeper understanding of unconscious processes underlying identifications. So the challenge — and the invitation — is to hold both truths at once: how can we honour the specificity of identity as a political tool without losing the shared ground that makes collective social transformation possible? What practices help us stay open to complexity, even when it’s uncomfortable?
Testimonials
Anita Prasad | Executive Director, Working for Change
Victor Willis | Lead for the Toronto (Mental Health & Addictions) Supportive Housing Network
The ICI Network
Individuals may participate in several of these roles depending on their time and interest.
Coordinators:
Administration, planning and design.
Practitioners:
Undertake learning to develop skills in listening, self-reflection, exploring, and associating (the interpretative stance) to unconscious dynamics with themselves, others and the group as a whole with a focus on difference. Practitioners apply these learnings within their work, social movement spaces and personal lives.
Consultants:
Undertake the rigor of learning to consult to ICI learning events and who willingly take up the responsibility to develop the expertise this role requires.
Researchers:
Partners with ICI and leads research on learning about unconscious processes while developing and maintaining a strong self-reflective praxis on how research shapes knowledge building and ownership of intellectual property
Allies:
Those who support ICI’s learning events by providing their expertise and those interested in psychoanalytic ideas and their application to social justice contexts.
Founder:
Holds ICI’s vision, leading training with experienced practitioners.